25 Civilians Killed in For Each GI Killed in Iraq

25 Civilians Killed in America For Each GI
Killed In Iraq

Preoccupied with the fighting in
Sadr City, it may have escaped President Bush’s notice
that millions of African-Americans live in blighted
neighborhoods, some of which, like Sadr City, also appear to
have been ravaged by bloodshed and violence.

“The
physical landscape of such neighborhoods often consists of
abandoned buildings, poor-quality housing stock, unclean
streets, and a low quality of municipal
services---particularly schools and recreational
facilities,” urban affairs experts James Carr and Nandinee
Kutty write in their new book, “Segregation: The Rising
Costs For America”(Routledge). “High levels of crime,
violence, and drug trafficking created extreme social
disorder in America’s jobless ghettos,” write Kutty, an
urban housing consultant and Carr, Chief Operating Officer
for the National Community Reinvestment
Coalition.

Chicago’s police superintendent Jody Weis
doesn’t have to read about violence in books. The
Associated Press reported April 21st Weis “blamed an
excess of guns and gangs for a rash of 26 shootings over the
weekend that killed (eight) and wounded victims from 13 to
65 years old.” Similar reports of slaughter have been
seeping like swamp gas out of Philadelphia, Richmond,
Calif., Cincinnati, Oakland, New Haven, and others.
“Violent Crime In Cities Shows Sharp Surge, Reversing
Trend,” The New York Times reported March 9th. Since
September 11, 2001, nearly 100,000 people have been murdered
in the U.S., The Times’ Bob Herbert wrote last September
29th, surveying a period of just six years. As Chuck Wexler,
executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum,
put it: “There are pockets of crime in this country that
are astounding.”

Let’s see now, four thousand goes
into 100,000 25 times, so for every GI killed in Iraq, 25
American civilians are murdered in USA and you can’t blame
it on “Islamofascists.” Maybe President Bush’s would
pay attention to our home-grown terrorism if newspapers
publish photographs of all the local children and adults
that have been murdered in their communities just as they
print the pictures of GI’s killed in the Middle East. Bush
won’t change his policy, of course, but the graphics might
make Americans realize Iraq is a trillion-dollar sideshow we
can’t afford because we have an urgent crisis at home.

Back in 1962, the National Urban League’s Whitney Young
called for a “Marshall Plan” to combat urban poverty and
President Kennedy didn’t respond, either. Generation
after generation, America consigns its minorities to largely
segregated cities, some even more segregated today (80 and
90 percent) than they were in 1860. Congress is shelling out
$700 billion to fight wars around the world this year but
can’t find pennies to open the doors of opportunity to our
segregated millions. A single fighter plane today can cost
$15 million. You can hire a lot of good teachers with that
kind of money. You can finance a lot of housing. You can
create a lot of domestic jobs. Sure, there are whites who
insist blacks should lift themselves up by the proverbial
bootstraps---without recognizing that in some ghettos the
most lucrative business open to the poor is drug-running.
As Gary Orfield, co-director of the Civil Rights Project at
UCLA told AP, “The criminal economy is one of the only
alternatives in some of these places. You basically have the
criminalization of a whole community, particularly in some
inner cities.” Result: of 2.3 million Americans behind
bars, 500,000 of them were caged for drug crimes. And who is
surprised that about 40% of them are African-Americans?
Steve Mariotti of the non-profit National Foundation For
Teaching Entrepreneurship(NFTE) says drug gang members
display much the same ingenuity as entrepreneurs---but lack
constructive opportunities for their talents. NFTE has
helped 150,000 inner city youth “turn street smarts into
business smarts,” so it can be done. Kids who once served
as lookouts for drug lords are running legit start-ups of
their own, taking a bite out of crime.

It’s fortunate
some inner city kids can create their own businesses because
racism in employment is alive and well. Just as real estate
operators steer minority renters and home-seekers away from
functional, white suburbs, employers in those suburbs
don’t have openings when minority job-seekers knock.
“There is strong evidence that prejudiced attitudes on the
part of employers result in discrimination against qualified
minority job applicants,” writes Margery Turner, director
of the Urban Institute’s Metropolitan Housing and
Communities policy center, in “Segregation.” “Blacks
are particularly unlikely to be hired for jobs that require
higher cognitive skills, especially daily computer use,
arithmetic, or customer interaction. Many analysts have
suggested that customer prejudice may also be a factor,
since the racial composition of a firm’s workforce has
been found to be related both to the race of the manager and
to the racial composition of the firm’s customers.”
Turner adds, “In general, minority job seekers are less
successful in using their networks of family and friends
than whites. Again, although residential segregation is not
the only reason why minorities have less effective networks,
it certainly is a factor, particularly for minorities living
in high-poverty center city neighborhoods and also for those
in the segregated suburbs.”

And as long as public
education is funded from property taxes, white school
children continue to enjoy a competitive advantage. Deborah
McKoy and Jeffrey Vincent, both with the University of
California at Berkeley Center for Cities and Schools, point
out a single-family home in predominantly Prince George’s
county, Md., outside Washington, D.C., was priced at
$195,400 in 2003 compared to $365,900 for a house in
predominantly white Fairfax county, Va. “Residential
segregation clearly contributes to minorities’ unequal
educational attainment and hence to their disadvantaged
position in the evolving labor market,” they write in
“Segregation.” “Black high school graduation rates,
employment rates, and wages are all negatively affected by
the level of black-white segregation in a city. Other things
being equal, high levels of segregation have shown to
increase high school dropout rates among blacks, reduce
employment among blacks, (while increasing the white
employment rate), and widen the gap between black and white
wages.”

The struggle to create a color-blind republic
with a level playing field has been underway in earnest ever
since returning black World War Two veterans decided “we
aren’t going to take it anymore.” Significant gains have
been made over stubborn opposition, gains that Rev. Martin
Luther King and others paid for with their blood, yet equal
opportunity remains America’s unfinished business. If
injustice continues to breed poverty and crime, we may soon
be sending our kids to school in bullet-proof vests, just
like the flak jackets Commander-in-Chief Bush’s embassy
workers wear in Baghdad’s Green
Zone.

*************

(Sherwood Ross is a Miami-based public
relations consultant and reporter. During the 1960s he
worked in an executive capacity in the civil rights
movement. Disclosure: Steve Mariotti cited in this article
is a former business associate of this writer. Reach him at
sherwoodr1@yahoo.com)

This is an opportunity for you as one of the 4 million potential funders and recipients of a Universal Basic Income to collectively consider the issue:1. Is UBI is a desirable policy for New Zealand; and2. How should a UBI system work in practice. More>>

The National party has announced its youth justice policy, which includes a controversial plan for recidivist serious youth offenders to be hit over the head with a comically large rubber mallet. More>>

ALSO:

It's been brought to my attention that Labour's new campaign slogan is "Let's do this". A collective call to action. A mission. I myself was halfway out of the couch before I realised I wasn't sure what it was I was supposed to do. More>>

ALSO:

Ordinary citizens have had very few venues where they can debate and discuss as to what they believe has led to the crisis in affordable housing and how we might begin to address this. The HiveMind on affordable housing was about redressing the balance. More>>

ALSO:

This is an opportunity for you as one of the 4 million guardians of our common water resources to help us find mutually agreeable solutions to the critical task of collectively managing these resources for health and sustainability. More>>